The left always gets tagged with much higher standards to live up to. Far, far higher.

If the “outsider” candidate is centrist or right-wing, nuff said. They don’t have to explain anything. But if the outsider candidate is left-wing, honestly left-wing, she is immediately tasked with all kinds of hoops to jump through in order to prove their viability as candidate. “What has she ever done!!”

This is something not asked by supporters of Trump, for instance, who also has never won any elective office.

This is also not a requirement for Ms. Clinton, who, while winning elective office, and publicly supporting all kinds of traditional “progressive” causes — for women, minorities and so on . . . . hasn’t actually done anything to improve the lives of POCs or women.

There are some, in fact, who say it’s quite the opposite. Not sure if you guys already posted this article, for instance:

Why Hillary Clinton Doesn’t Deserve the Black Vote

• This reply was modified 8 years, 7 months ago by Billy_T.

Waterfield,

To me, it says great things about her that she keeps running as a Green. She could likely have gained “power” early on, as a member of the Democratic Party, but that would have meant chucking her principles and selling out. So few politicians, in either wing of the Duopoly, have ever avoided that. It’s basically a preexisting condition of our system, which now requires nearly a billion to just get nominated, to all but sell out before hand.

In short, I don’t see her lack of political victories as important in the slightest. It’s a badge of honor, in my book. If she were to win from that perch (The Greens), she would have done something that virtually no other president has done, at least in living memory:

Avoided the complete (or close to it) sell-out necessary to win elections via the Duopoly.

Here’s her “about” page:

http://www.jill2016.com/about

And if you just go by this little snippet, her “accomplishments” already trump Trump’s:

Jill received several awards for health and environmental protection including: Clean Water Action’s “Not in Anyone’s Backyard” Award, the Children’s Health Hero” Award, and the Toxic Action Center’s Citizen Award. Jill has appeared as an environmental health expert on the Today Show, 20/20, Fox News, and other programs. She also served on the board of directors for Physicians for Social Responsibility.

She is the co-author of two widely-praised reports, In Harm’s Way: Toxic Threats to Child Development, published in 2000, and Environmental Threats to Healthy Aging, published in 2009. The first of these has been translated into four languages and is used worldwide as a community tool in the fight for health and the environment. The reports connect the dots between human health, social justice, a healthy environment and green economies.

Jill was born in Chicago and raised in Highland Park, Illinois. She graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College in 1973, and from Harvard Medical School in 1979.

• This reply was modified 8 years, 7 months ago by Billy_T.

zn wrote:

Billy_T wrote:

bnw wrote:

The vast majority of movies are not art. They are a commodity. “Troy” is a commodity.

We agree on that. See, WV? More common ground!!

All art is a commodity. It has value, and is traded for things or money or status or prestige or all of the above.

But taste? That can differ. Within a given range, people have different experiences and like different things.

I’m talking about commodity in the capitalist sense. In the Marxist sense of the capitalist sense. No, not all “art” is a commodity. That implies endless exchange, for the sake of exchange, where the exchange itself, where the result of the exchange (money) is the alpha and omega — and not the art. The sole purpose is to make money, etc. etc.

To commodify something is to alter its purpose to fit inside that box. To be the thing that makes money, and nothing more. If it has “use value” beyond the exchange, that’s just a lucky side effect. The raison d’etre for a commodity under capitalism is to make money for the capitalist.

“Art,” at least from my point of view, is something that radically transcends all of that. That exists prior to those particular economic relations, scoffs at them, radically overcomes them, perhaps even embarrasses and shames them, etc.

Real “art,” in fact, in a kind of meta-narrative, demonstrates the shallowness, the emptiness of culture as commodity*. This has always been an essential part of its tradition(s).

*Milan Kundera’s use of the word “kitsch” fits well here.

• This reply was modified 8 years, 7 months ago by Billy_T.

bnw wrote:

The vast majority of movies are not art. They are a commodity. “Troy” is a commodity.

We agree on that. See, WV? More common ground!!

Take history. I like, in a rather unsophisticated pure pleasure way, Brit historical dramas. The King’s Speech. Elizabeth. The Queen. Rob Roy. The Madness of King George.

I think we may still be talking past one another. I like those films, too. Loved the first two, especially. Cate Blanchett was otherworldly as Elizabeth, and I noticed how the director crafted sets as if they were 16th and 17th century paintings. Beautifully done, beautifully acted. No. It didn’t bother me that they “took liberties” with history. This is where the “they all do it” part kicks in and makes sense to me.

But Homer isn’t history. His world is larger than life. His world contains myriad metaphors for our lives, and, as with pretty much all the best myth, points to deep psychological dynamics lesser works can’t touch. To me, messing with that is messing with the sacred. I don’t see “history” as sacred, and have never expected movies to stick to that book.

I probably also misread you in another way: I got the sense that you were saying a director MUST make changes to source material, or he or she isn’t an “artist.” I disagree with that take — a perspective you may or may not actually hold. IOW, a film director — or screenwriter — doesn’t have to change one iota of a story in order for it to be “art,” or for him or her to be an “artist,” or for their work process to also be an artistic process. The medium of film is perhaps unique in that way. That the decisions regarding how to visualize a story on the screen aren’t any less “artistic” for toeing the line with original source material. Sticking strictly to it, or deviating wildly from it, isn’t what makes it “art,” or the process artistic, or the director an artist, etc. etc. Other things do that. David Lean, for instance, took liberties with Pasternak’s book, and T.E Lawrence’s, but he created cinematic masterpieces all the same. And, given what he did produce, it’s fair to say, he would have created masterpieces had he been slavishly devoted to the original — though we’ll never know that counterfactual, etc.

Anyway . . . and to repeat: It’s not so much “change” per se. It’s “what” is changed. In the case of Troy, wiping out certain characters with their own set of vital, essential ancient myths (Agamemnon and the House of Atreus, et al) seems almost nihilistic to me. I didn’t see it adding to the movie at all, and it didn’t make sense as a plot device. Going back to the movies you cited, their changes “worked” for me. They worked artistically, etc.

PA,

I read all the books. They’re page turners, but not especially well-written page turners, IMO. They did hook me, but all along the way, I could find serious faults with the plotting and the prose.

The HBO show, in many ways, is better than the book series. But it can suffer from what you bring up, which is also a problem with the books. Martin includes too many characters, doing too many things, draws this all out far too long, and creates unnecessary problems for his own books. I think he could have used his own Maxwell Perkins. But once you get that famous, publishing houses and agents are often too afraid to suggest paring things down a bit.

He may never finish his epic.

Yep. They have to move the Arya plot forward, and I have no idea where it’s going. I suspect, however, she will end up with Daenarys, and Daenarys will end up with Jon Snow as co-ruler of Westeros. If the Night’s King doesn’t get them all first.

As Vinnie Barbarino once said, “I’m so confused!”

;>)

We don’t disagree about what artists have done through the years, centuries, millennia. Yes, there is endless recreation, recombining, alteration to go with the creation. That is a part of the deal, the process, the making of art. I think where things went off-track is that I did take your comments as totalizing. They did strike me as “you’re wrong. I’m right. That’s a fact, Jack, and there is no other way to look at this.”

We also use different words to express different things, when it comes to “art,” which is kind of a sacred thing to me. I have no religion. Am an atheist, and a “No gods, no Masters” sorta guy. But “art”? That’s about as close as I get to thinking that there is something “divine” in this world. And, yeah, I’m exaggerating here to make a point.

So when I see the word, I think of genius and the extraordinary and the “original,” to the degree possible. I don’t see all attempts at “art” as being “art.” Most, in fact, fail. And because of that, I can’t give a filmmaker an automatic pass at slicing and dicing source material to his or her heart’s content. It has to actually make sense within the world they depict; it has to actually rise to “art,” in order for me to call it that.

I didn’t see that at all with the movie Troy. I saw it as willful and self-indulgent change for change’s sake, and a far cry from the power of the source material.

Basically, when something is so brilliant already, so self-contained, while sending us into a multitude of other directions, why change it? It’s far more than the old “if it aint broke, don’t fix it,” thing. A gazillion levels beyond that. It’s why mess with virtual perfection (beyond minor variations) at all? Why not just try to bring it, intact, to a new audience — that is a major achievement in and of itself, IMO.

• This reply was modified 8 years, 7 months ago by Billy_T.

ZN,

Not going by “argument from authority.” Was responding to your insistence that you know what art is, and I supposedly don’t. My first degree was in Art Studio, with a minor in Art History. I know the “history” part too. I also have never stopped studying the history of the humanities in general, and have more than enough credits for a degree in Literature, and an MFA if I want to go back. I was taught music while young, with an emphasis on its history, too. We both have strong backgrounds on the subject. You teach it. I could teach it. And so on.

Again, I don’t think we’re even talking about the same thing here, though I am getting the idea that we disagree on what qualifies as “art.”

Oh, well. This too shall pass.

• This reply was modified 8 years, 7 months ago by Billy_T.

Very true about Homer. He just put down already ancient myth on paper, drawing from a very rich oral tradition. But that tradition was pretty careful to stay fairly much within the same parameters, with wiggle room allowed for small differences, play, variations on a theme, improv and so on. But it was vital for those storytellers than the audience know the basics, the names, who died when and where, and they kept to that. They didn’t try to throw their audiences off by killing off a character who normally goes on to many other adventures, simply because they could. It wasn’t generally a self-indulgent art in Homer’s time.

Anyway, I think we’re likely talking past each other at this point, and perhaps about really different things.

I think the author also dismissed the work of Chris Moody too quickly. He’s not alone. There is a growing pile of evidence showing the differences in the way people on the left and right think — though I wish they’d extend this beyond the usual liberal/conservative paradigm:

Different brain structures

“What’s really fascinating is that there have been a number of recent studies looking at brain structural differences between liberals and conservatives,” said Saltz. “And what’s been found in several studies is that liberals tend to have a larger anterior cingulate gyrus. That is an area that is responsible for taking in new information and that impact of the new information on decision making or choices. Conservatives tended on the whole to have a larger right amygdala. Amygdala being a deeper brain structure that processes more emotional information—specifically fear-based information,” Saltz explained.

While understanding brain structure could be helpful when engaging in any bipartisan negotiation that reaches across the aisle, of course, as Saltz explains, “it’s not black-and-white” for every individual. But it does give a pretty good guess at which kind of appeal could resonate more successfully with the political other, depending on how they respond to fear-based decision-making and how open they are to new information.

“Basically the study showed that if you just based it on brain structural size difference, you could predict who would be a conservative and who would be a liberal with a frequency of 71.6 percent; 71.6 percent is a pretty high ability to predict who is a conservative and who is a liberal just from brain structure,” Saltz said.

You really take the cake. Your lack of sincerity and my wasting my time addressing it sure makes me the fool. Have you been living under a rock since Obama was elected?

You’re making it personal, bnw. I’m absolutely sincere in what I’ve written.

Beyond that: you posted one Op Ed, by Elizabeth Price Foley, who works at Cato, and is an advocate for the Tea Party. Just one editorial. That proves nothing. She is also one of the leads in the lawsuit by the House against the ACA.

Come on. Please find articles that have at least a little bit of objectivity to support your claims.

• This reply was modified 8 years, 7 months ago by Billy_T.
• This reply was modified 8 years, 7 months ago by Billy_T.

My post answered each question. I addressed his policy regarding ILLEGAL immigration and its effect on the US worker. Could have addressed its effect upon the US taxpayer but that wouldn’t have mattered with you.

It actually didn’t answer those questions. It just basically repeated what Trump says about what he’ll supposedly do, which is too vague to parse. It’s all bluster about the amazing things he will “get done,” just because he’s the greatest deal-maker in history, and it will all magically come to fruition — because he says it will. He has zero track record of doing any of these things he vaguely references in his word salad speeches.

Nor has he demonstrated an ounce of knowledge about the economy or how it works. And he’s absolutely wrong about the effects of undocumented workers on wages. They don’t drive them down at all. People like Trump drive them down. Business owners drive them down. The capitalist system is set up to drive them down. That’s how business owners get rich, if they haven’t inherited everything. They get rich by suppressing wages. The more they want to keep for themselves, the more they suppress them.

Trump is scapegoating the powerless in order to distract you from the people pissing all over you. And Trump is one of them.

Oh, and speaking of Game of Thrones, a series I like . . . . just found out via Wiki that one of its Show Runners, David Benioff, worked on “Troy.”

He seems to have shifted on the topic of keeping close to the source material since then. While there are differences between the HBO show and the Martin originals, and it’s now gone beyond them in time, they did try to keep it close. Martin has so many different characters, and so many different plates in the air at the same time, TV producers, even those who have the luxury of a series, have to consolidate here and there. So I get that. I just don’t get change for change’s sake, especially when the original is much better and more powerful (Homer, Aeschylus, Virgil, etc.)

WV,

I think you’re right about that. Hollywood doesn’t do them justice.

The recent attempt at Homer’s Iliad, “Troy,” just killed me. I will never understand why Hollywood directors feel they need to mess with (and rewrite) Greek myths — or any other kind of ancient story — which have stood the “test of time” for well over two millennia. They are loaded with more than enough drama, suspense, action, excitement, psychological insight, etc. etc. . . . to be left as is. Not one change is necessary. Yet they inevitably feel they can’t leave them alone.

In the movie “Troy,” they even destroy their own chance at sequels, which are there in the myths. They kill off Agamemnon there, for some inexplicable reason, instead of going with time-honored stories of his Return and murder while at home, by his wife, Clytemnestra. Lots of other weird changes in the movie script, which, to me, just didn’t improve upon the myths, at all.

They never do.

Oh, well.

Yep. White supremacists love Trump, and they’re pretty much all Republicans.

Maher was correct when he said, “Not all Republicans are racists; but pretty much all racists are Republicans.”

The transformation of the Democratic Party on at least this issue has been nothing short of amazing. But it also tells us something tragic. Racism and bigotry don’t go away. They just shift home teams.

. . . . . Though I do think that societal shaming/shunning has strong effects over time, through the generations. A kind of war of attrition. But it’s still not going away. So the best thing to do is to render it impotent. That’s why I think the emphasis should be on class, rather than “identity politics.” As mentioned, if we pull down the pyramids, end hierarchies to the degree possible, end economic apartheid . . . there is no power anymore to support racism and bigotry and its effects. And the effects are really what matter. We can’t control minds, but we can do a ton to destroy those effects.